Food safe dyes for bowls

I would be cautious... Many of the chemical dyes are questionable and some are downright poison (any analine dyes for instance i wouldn't use). You can however use a variety of foods as dyes which would be safe and in many cases just use "food coloring" (available at the local grocery) to color wood. The problem is that a lot of the food safe dyes are not super color safe so they tend to bleed if not well sealed, which sort of ruins the point in most food tool uses.

There are also other ways to to "discolor" wood like ammonia fuming, tannin darkening, bleach that would end up as food safe - some are discussed here
http://www.woodworking.org/WC/Garchive01/3_27colorants.html
(note that some of the things he discusses there are NOT food safe use good sense :D)
 
At a demo Mike Mahoney said he would never use dyes, coloring or anything that would alter the woods color of any kind on utility bowls. He said decorative no problem. Of course he just uses nothing or just walnut oil on his utility items. So I have never used dyes on bowls that are to be used as food.
 
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